'Why not fight for gold?': How Avinash Sable broke Kenya's steeplechase stranglehold
In the men's 3000m steeplechase final at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, a remarkable moment unfolded. With 150 metres left, Kenya's Abraham Kibiwot glanced over his shoulder – not once, but twice. He looked rattled, pushing to hold off a challenger who, by history, had no business being that close.
Kenya had dominated the event at the Commonwealth Games since 1998, sweeping the podium every edition. A seventh clean sweep was expected. But Avinash Sable, an army man from Mandwa village in Beed, Maharashtra, had other plans.
Even before the final lap, Kibiwot had built a comfortable lead. Yet Sable refused to fall back. He had decided on a simple, risky strategy: keep pace with the Kenyans and hope not to fade. “If I had to win a medal, I had to beat at least one of them,” Sable later told The Indian Express. “I thought whatever happens, I will not fall behind the Kenyan athletes. I was ready to put all my effort into this one race.”
The Kenyan trio included Conseslus Kipruto – the 2016 Olympic champion and two-time world champion – Amos Serem, the reigning world under-20 champion, and Kibiwot himself, who would go on to win world championship bronze in 2023 and Olympic bronze in 2024. Sable, despite a reputation for falling short at major championships, matched them stride for stride. He even led for the first 400 metres, before the Kenyans overtook him, but he refused to let them go.
With 500 metres left, Sable had already run down Serem and Kipruto. Now he chased the leader. By the third-last hurdle, he had closed on Kibiwot. At the water jump before the final hurdle, both men cleared it, but Sable clipped the rail. At the line, he dipped for the win but missed by a stride. His time of 8:11.20 was a national record; Kibiwot's was 8:11.15. Serem took bronze in 8:16.83.
The race was a swift redemption. Less than a month earlier, at the World Championships in Oregon, Sable had finished 11th in one of the slowest steeplechase finals in history. The contrast in pace was stark: the gold medal time in Oregon was more than nine seconds slower than Serem's bronze in Birmingham.
“The race was fast but it helped because I didn't have to overthink about strategy. Just go all out,” Sable said. Somewhere in the closing stages, his target shifted. “I had wanted to win a medal, even a bronze was fine. With only Kibiwot ahead of me, I was sure I would win a medal. I thought, why not catch the man in front? When I am on silver, why not fight for gold?”
Sable's silver was India's first ever Commonwealth Games medal in the men's steeplechase. It ended Kenya's streak of podium sweeps and announced the arrival of a new contender in a traditionally dominant event.
